Endorsements
Dr. Peter A. Lillback
May our nation never forget the spiritual treasures of faith found in the Scriptures that are so clearly explained by this historic and newly republished version of God’s Word.
–Peter A. Lillback, Ph.D, Author of the National Bestseller “George Washington’s Sacred Fire” President of Westminster Theological Seminary
Rear Admiral Larry L. Hereth
Dale Mason found a significant historical gap and addressed it with laser precision. He takes you a step back in time to an era with a different way of life technologically, but one with arguably as much risk, chaos, and challenges as we see today. In that era following America’s war for independence, the Self-Interpreting Bible had a very broad impact on our nation’s development. Cultivating a biblical worldview, it served as an anchor to stabilize, guide, and help grow our new nation. The goals, rights, policies, and the personal lives of so many of our citizens were influenced through their training and study of this Bible. How I wish that were true today! The immense amount of development work by Rev. John Brown under very difficult circumstances is unimaginable in today’s digital world – and such dedication is truly inspiring. All aspects of that oversized family study Bible: compiling the notes, the archaic printing challenges, the miracle that it survived to reach America, the support from George Washington and the Legislature, and the wave of impact as it spread throughout the country are captivating to read. This fascinating account clearly explains George Washington’s faith and impact as a Bible-believing Christian. The documentation leaves no doubt that our first President was far beyond a deist in his theology. Dale has a deep understanding of American history, culture, and the Bible. His engaging writing style stems from years as an editor/publisher of a national magazine. Coupled with extraordinary research and careful documentation, Dale makes this true story come alive!
–Larry L. Hereth – Rear Admiral, U.S. Coast Guard (Retired), 34 years active duty
Dr. Diana Severance
John Brown's Self-Interpreting Bible is a historic treasure and powerful aid in the study of the Scriptures. The 1792 edition was the first full English Bible ever printed in New York, which was then the capital of the young United States. This republication of the 1792 edition not only includes the King James Bible with Brown's wonderful notes, applications, and cross-references, but the prologue, written by general editor Dale Mason, provides a fascinating history of this Bible itself. Mason has done a marvelous work in researching the true stories behind this fabulous book. George Washington owned a copy of the Self-Interpreting Bible, and the rich prologue includes a wide variety of details about Washington's Christian faith and his practice of daily family Bible reading. Further historical background to this Bible provides a valuable supplement to U.S. history. With this republication of the 1792 edition of Brown's Self-Interpreting Bible, the reader touches the past while gaining strength for the present and hope for the future.
–Diana Severance, Ph.D, Director of Dunham Bible Museum
Angela O’Dell
In an era and culture in which it is popular to paint historic characters and events with the broad-brush strokes of a gloomy agnostic worldview, Dale Mason has provided an undeniably vivid spiritual portrait of one of the most impactful and important men in our nation’s history. Dale’s patriotic and apologetic work in this volume answers George Washinton’s critics with the evidence of not only his integrity and Christian faith, but of the profound display of God’s guiding hand in the establishment of the United States of America. Dale’s careful research, brought to us in an extensive prologue, brings to light the incredible connections between George Washington and the historic and religious treasure that is John Brown’s Self-Interpreting Bible. This republication of the 1792 edition, complete with all of its original study notes and cross references, combined with Dale Mason’s contribution, is a gift to a generation of Americans in desperate need of a patriotic revival based in the truth about our founding. It is reminiscent of the Biblical call to “remember the landmarks” of God’s faithfulness from generation to generation. Families all over our nation will benefit from Dale’s monumental work in this volume.
–Angela O’Dell, Historian, Author, Podcaster
Dr. Joel R. Beeke
Not only did John Brown of Haddington write excellent works on preaching, church history, pastoral theology, and systematic theology, but in 1778—just two years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence—he also produced what would become his most significant work, The Self-Interpreting Bible. This remarkably influential study Bible is a distinctly Christocentric, Reformed, and experiential work replete with theologically rich, exegetically penetrating, and historically valuable notes, cross-references, and applications. Here, indeed, is a treasure trove for posterity. May God bless Brown’s Bible to readers in the twenty-first century as much as He did when it was first published over two centuries ago!
-Joel R. Beeke, PhD, Chancellor of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, Professor of Homiletics & Systematic Theology
Mary V. Thompson:
At the time of his death in December of 1799, George Washington had put together a library containing over 1,200 titles. The largest category (33%) of the books dealt with politics, economics, and law. The second largest, a little over 14% were focused on religion and philosophy. A bit under 14% were focused on military histories and popular fiction. He also had many books on agriculture, literature, geography and other subjects. During the course of his life, Washington’s access to books had grown exponentially.
Due in part to a shortage of ministers in the British colony of Virginia, it was common practice for 17th- and 18th-century parents to take on the responsibility for religious instruction within their homes, rather than simply at the church. The Bible often served as the primer for young children learning to read, while books of sermons and other religious treatises in the home continued and deepened the religious education of students in colonial Virginia. George Washington’s mother, Mary Ball Washington, found herself responsible for the education of her five surviving children, after the death of her husband, Augustine Washington, in 1743. Assisting her in this process were a number of biblically focused books from the library she and Augustine had amassed over the years.
Mary was remembered in the family as an extremely devout woman. The recollections of the grandsons who grew up in the closest proximity to her provide some indication of the influence she may have had on the spiritual development of her own children many years before. Lawrence Lewis, the son of George Washington’s sister, Betty Washington Lewis, spent many years in close contact with his grandmother, as she was cared for in her elderly years by his mother. He recalled that Mary had a favorite rock, which gave a lovely view of the surrounding countryside, and that it “was upon this spot, rendered forever dear to my recollection, she impressed on our infant minds the wonderful works of the Great Creator of all things, his goodness, his mercy to all who love and obey him.” Lawrence’s younger brother Robert remembered spending Sunday evenings looking through the pictures illustrating the Washington family Bible with his grandmother, as she read aloud to him from it. There is no reason to think that she had not given similar lessons to her own children, including her eldest son George, during his boyhood.
In addition to the Bible and Anglican prayer books, the home in which George Washington was raised contained a number of other books on Christianity, written primarily by Anglican clerics. Mary Ball would have been about 19 or 20 years old in 1728, when she inscribed her name in a book entitled The Christan Life, from Its Beginning, to Its Consummation in Glory, which had been written by English pastor John Scott and was first published in London in 1681. It emphasized “the significance of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, the role of Scripture, and the importance of prayer and worship” and may well have been a gift from her much older brother, Joseph Ball. “Scott’s volume recommended Christian virtues like meekness, resignation, and humility that a wife would need if she hoped for a peaceful marriage in a patriarchal world. Mary emphasized humility to herself, her children, and her grandchildren, as they would recall.” She also owned—and signed—a 1685 copy of Contemplations, Moral and Divine, by Sir Matthew Hale, which later came into George Washington’s library at Mount Vernon. There is a family tradition that Mary Ball Washington read aloud from this book to her children. Hale credited Jesus Christ as the way to Heaven, yet was tolerant on other religious matters, numbering both nonconformists and liberal Anglicans among his friends. Another of the books known to have been in the library of George Washington’s parents was a collection of sermons from 1717, entitled The Sufficiency of a Standing Revelation in General, and of the Scripture Revelation in Particular . . . In Eight Sermons, Preached in the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, London, by Offspring Blackhall, a prominent cleric of the period. The book in the Washington home was based on lectures given by Blackhall in 1700 as part of a series, instituted by scientist Robert Boyle “as a bulwark of Christianity—more particularly, of Low Church Anglican Christianity—against a rising tide of infidelity.
As an adult, George Washington continued to follow the Anglican faith and teachings he learned in his family. In the army during the French and Indian War, his earnest attempts to get the Virginia government to fund a chaplain for his soldiers brought sadness, but he later was able to convince the Continental Congress to provide chaplains for the Continental Army in the Revolution. He became a leader in his local congregation, where he served for many years, running the business of the parish and seeing that the poor, disabled, and indigent were properly cared for. He also made donations for decorating the church and provided wine for the communion service. Throughout his lifetime, he also gave money to charitable causes outside the Anglican church. There are at least two surviving letters in which Washington hinted at his belief that God had a plan in mind for his life and that it was up to him as an individual, with divine assistance, to discern what that plan was. For example, as he was trying to decide about taking up the office of president, Washington wrote to an old friend [Jonathan Trumbull]: “How can I know what is best, or on what I shall determine? May Heaven assist me in forming a judgment: for at present I see nothing but clouds and darkness before me.”
As a student of history, Washington knew well that religious differences could cause terrible troubles, unless the people were committed to religious freedom. As president, he received letters from numerous religious denominations within the country, whose members had experienced varying sorts of persecution prior to the formation of the new American government. Washington wrote them back, seeking to calm their fears of continued persecution and second-class status, under a government with him at the head. As he wrote [on May 10, 1789] in response to a letter from the Virginia Baptists, Washington acknowledged their fears:
“If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the constitution framed in the convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it. . . . For you doubtless remember, that I have often expressed my sentiments, that every man, conducting himself as a good citizen, and being accountable to God alone for his religious opinions, ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.”
This newly-published edition of John Brown’s Self-Interpreting Bible, together with researcher Dale Mason’s well-documented and illustrated new chapters, highlight many exciting and little-known events from the lifetime and legacy of George Washington. Mason gives modern readers the chance to become familiar with “the father of America” in a fresh new way through one of the Bibles from Washington’s own library—the only Bible to which Washington “subscribed” and thereby lent his respected name. Originally designed to inspire deeper Christian commitment and provide an education in Biblical history and Christian theology for those without the wherewithal to attend school, it also became the most-republished English language family study Bible in the world for over a century to come. The first American printing of Brown’s Self-Interpreting Bible was pressed in New York from 1790 to 1792, during Washington’s first term as president and it soon helped families of all social status as they read the Scriptures together and asked questions of the text. It can also be a blessing to today’s families, if they follow the daily practices of Bible-reading and prayer of our first president.
–Mary V. Thompson, Author & Research Historian Emerita, George Washington’s Mount Version